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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Sam Yurkiw poured his life into the Gold Range.

And people noticed. They would flock to see the man who owned Yellowknife's most famous watering hole for nearly three decades, perched on a stool behind the bar with a giant flashlight.

Former Gold Range owner Sam Yurkiw minds the bar in December 1991. Yurkiw, who owned the bar for 30 years, died yesterday. - photo courtesy of the Gold Range

They'd come for advice, for loans or for friendship.

Yurkiw died at Stanton Territorial Hospital yesterday. He was 83.

Before Alzheimer's disease and ill health hospitalized Yurkiw in 2004, the businessman had a routine you could set your watch to.

After a typical day of checking his various businesses around town in his rickety old brown pickup truck, you'd find Yurkiw and the flashlight behind the bar of the Gold Range.

He'd flick it on if he wanted someone's attention.

"People knew if he put that light on you, you better behave," said Gina Sarasin with a hearty laugh. She worked on-and-off for him since 1986.

Yurkiw, who bought the landmark diner, hotel and bar in 1977, was a hard-nosed businessman.

But people who knew him say he had a heart of gold.

"He always looked after us," Sarasin said at the Gold Range yesterday. "When we got out of hand, he'd slap you on the wrist - and you felt it."

He was the boss, she said. And he made sure you stayed on the "straight and narrow."

But he was always there to help. If you quit and came back, he'd give you another chance.

If one of his bar customers didn't have enough money for groceries, he'd lend them the cash, said Nadene McMenemy, who was the general manager of the Gold Range until the business was sold to Jay Park in 2007.

"If he liked you, and thought you were good for it, he'd give it to you," she said. If not, he'd pull pennies from his other pocket, she laughed.

When McMenemy's mother died, he went to a travel agent and bought a ticket for her to fly home.

"He'd say, 'You can worry about this when you get back.' "

It's probably why his office was plastered with bad cheques and IOUs.

"He helped hundreds of people," said Peter Pagonis, a longtime friend.

Pagonis regularly visited Yurkiw in hospital throughout his lengthy battle with Alzheimer's disease.

Sometimes Yurkiw would recognize him, but most of the time, he didn't.

That didn't matter to Pagonis.

"I had to see him - he's my friend."

Yurkiw's wife, Lola, died in 2000. He has two sons, Richard and Dave, and a daughter, Cathy. Richard took over the Gold Range a couple years later, around the time when family noticed Yurkiw's odd behaviour and memory loss.

The Gold Range was constructed in 1958 by Jacob Glick. The 50 Street business changed hands several times until Yurkiw, who owned the bakery next door, bought it in 1977.

In the late-1980s, the bar was rumoured to have the highest beer sales in the country.

Yurkiw's holdings grew over the years. He owned The Diner, the Gallery Bar, a bakery, Sam's Monkey Tree Pub, and several other properties.

Despite all the businesses competing for his attention, he always had time for his beloved dog, a black and white spaniel named Killer.

Almost every day, Yurkiw would send someone to the convenience store to pick up a Jersey Milk chocolate bar for the pup, which was also known to dine on steaks and cheeseburgers, she said.

McMenemy remembers a customer complaining about the animal in the bar.

"He said, 'That's not an animal, that's a shareholder,' " she said.

His days were long, and he worked hard. But that was his way.

"He'd be up at the crack of dawn," McMenemy said. "He came from an era when it was hands-on and hard work. You don't gripe, you just do it," she said, adding he'd always stay in his Gold Range suite despite owning several homes in Yellowknife.

"Not everybody was like that. But he was."

Walter Stolkovic, who lived in the Gold Range for several years, said Yurkiw was a fixture in the city.

"He was just the right man for the right place," he said yesterday in the lounge.

"A lot of people would come to the bar just to see him. He was part of the bar. I don't think we'll see a man like him for a lot of years."

Cracking open cold beers for customers yesterday, Sarasin was having trouble believing a man who was a father figure to so many, for many years, was gone.

"It's a loss. He's gone now." she said, shaking her head.

"It's a big loss for Yellowknife."

Funeral arrangements were not finalized by press time.